Cabal Around Buhari Blocks Tinubu From President

Sharing Spoil Of Office/2019 Presidential Race:
Cabal Around Buhari Blocks Tinubu From President
*APC National Leader Now Only Access Presidency Through Atiku, El-Rufai
By Our Reporters

A complex power play around President Muhammadu Buhari may have pushed the National Leader of the governing All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, to the fringes of the Presidency, effectively denying him direct access to the President.
Multiple and impeccable sources told The Dream Daily that “to go around this barricade put on his way by some clannish individuals who have the President ears,” Tinubu now approaches former Vice President Atiku Abubakar – “ironically, a man he helped the President to defeat in the APC presidential primaries in Lagos where President Buhari emerged as the standard bearer of the party”
Tinubu, according to sources, has also courted Kaduna State Governor, Malam Nasiru el-Rufai, “who is considered the President’s political godson and favourite to carry on the Buhari legacy possibly from 2019 or later,” in order to “get things through in the Presidency.”
The development, according to our sources, is deeply rooted “in the game of who gets what under the new administration and the struggle by the various powerful power blocs making up the APC to gain vantage positions in the scheme of things today and towards the 2019 presidential race.”
The alleged plot to keep Tinubu out of direct touch with the President, according to sources, involves the President’s “kitchen cabinet, notably, elements of the defunct Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) out to consolidate their hold on power under Buhari and after him. Shockingly, the burgeoning cabal around the President are also goading some prominent ‘Tinubu boys’ in the Presidency and government to dump him and join them in the plot,” one of our sources disclosed.
“The game plan,” according to the source, “is to use these ‘Tinubu boys’ to make inroads into the South West and create a new political base for the President’s use towards the 2019 presidential race, independent of Tinubu’s formidable political machinery on which President Buhari rode to power last year in the crucial South West bloc.”

Sources told The Dream Daily that “some individuals close to President Buhari have, for whatever reasons, become uncomfortable with Tinubu around them today and want to minimise his influence in the scheme of things both in the Presidency and in the APC. To me, the need, or if you like, desperation, to achieve this is understandable. Simply put, it is the politics of resource sharing and power-grabbing. However, what remains to be seen is to what extent they would go to check him (Tinubu), how successful the plot would be and what impact it would have in terms of electoral gains or losses for the APC in the near term and in the long view.”
But political analysts who spoke with The Dream Daily on condition of anonymity observed that “this is an uncanny rehash of how Tinubu’s pivotal support for former President Goodluck Jonathan in the 2011 Presidential Election was ‘rewarded’ with scorn, and we all know how the Jagaban struck back fatally for both Jonathan and the PDP in the 2015 elections.”
“You see, sometimes I wonder if our politicians and men in the corridors of power are operating in another stratosphere, and not in this Nigeria. May be these people are getting carried away with the allure of new-found power and influence they wield under Buhari but I think the danger of alienating such a formidable political juggernaut like Tinubu in the APC today is obvious even to the man on the street. It would be interesting to see how they would shut him (Tinubu) out and expect him to be happy and satisfied that he has received due compensation and respect for his immeasurable role in forming the APC and taking the party to the zenith of power in this country. Let’s see.”
Checking Tinubu: A Socio-Cultural Dimension

While most sources who spoke with The Dream Daily on the alleged plot to check Tinubu’s influence in the Presidency and the APC power struggle saw this from the prisms of politics and spoil of office sharing, a lecturer in History in one of the leading federal university, gave it a socio-cultural reading from the Yoruba perspective, warning that the alleged plot “could sound the death knell of the stunning, unparalleled alliance between the Tinubu-led faction of the South-West political divide and the Hausa/Fulani hegemony we all saw in the 2015 presidential election, which produced Buhari as President.”
The associate professor of history who pleaded anonymity said: “I have lived and worked among the Yoruba of the South West for over three decades and, having also studied them in the course of my professional undertakings as an academic, I could say that I have a fair grasp of these highly sophisticated people, their culture and world view, and how these are inseparable from their internal politics and the politics they play with other regions of this country.
“If, as you have claimed, some exclusionary, cliquish and clannish elements are pushing Tinubu to the periphery after he helped their region to gain power, thinking that his fellow Yoruba would welcome the development with glee and say ‘serves him right,’ then they don’t know the Yoruba People. I can only see a rude awakening for them.”
The academic continued: “As you know, I am of another ethnic stock in this country but I must confess my admiration for the Yoruba Race, even if I give it with a tinge of grudge. From what I know of them, I sometimes wondered if they do not have a lost-in-history link with the Jews because I see so many cultural affinities between the traditional Yoruba World, which continues to thrive to this day and in the face of neo-Westerner assault, and the Jewish Cosmos.
“Like the Jews, I think the Yoruba people reserves the right to castigate or punish one of their own and do not take kindly to anyone from another race trampling on him or her, even if that individual is in the wrong. They also don’t want non-Yoruba to meddle in their in-fighting, be it political or otherwise. It is a cultural precept that the Sir Ahmadu Bello-led Northern Nigeria failed to consider shortly before independence and thereafter when they went meddling in the internal politics of the Action Group, which exploded into the federal stage, cascading into several national calamities, including the 1966 coups, the civil war and so many others, the ripple effects of which this country is still grappling with today more than 50 years after the primeval cause.
“In my view, the Yoruba People also taught Zik (Chief Nnamdi Azikiwe), and perhaps the South-East, a great political lesson with the unprecedented cross-carpeting that occurred on the floor of the then Western Nigeria House of Assembly in the First Republic. Look, you have to give it to this people. They know the limit of individual ambition in the face of the collective interest or survival of the race.
“True, South-West was polarised in the last elections and the Tinubu political machinery outgunned the Yoruba Establishment to give victory to Buhari in the presidential election. It would also appear that the Yoruba Hegemony are not with him (Tinubu) today. From the region’s historical antecedences, the current political polarisation in Yorubaland isn’t skin deep. If anyone from another region sees this as an opportunity to dump Tinubu and build a new political network in the South West, they are in for a huge surprise. I’ll tell you what would likely happen.
“The Yoruba People would see this as not just a personal stab in the back of Tinubu but a betrayal of their race. They would dredge up similar historical treacheries, real or imagined, that the North has allegedly visited on the Yoruba race, and stamp it with the unimpeachable authority of Awo (Chief Obafemi Awolowo). While giving Tinubu, who will have no other recourse than to go back ‘home sulking’ to the Yoruba Establishment, his personal comeuppance in the inner recesses of an Oba’s palace or in the homestead of the Afenifere leader, for daring to go out of line to liaise with the Hausa/Fulani hegemony against the preferred candidate of the race in 2015, they would say something like, you see ‘Awo told us these people unreliable for any worthwhile alliance. They are not Omoluabi or afenifere.’
“You see, if the Yoruba tells you that you are not an Omoluabi, then you are finished; they are done with you and I don’t know what you can do redeem yourself before them and regain their trust or acceptance. The Omoluabi appellation sums up the Yoruba race’s unqualified trust in any individual both among themselves and outsiders. It is about the highest cultural garb they array themselves and measure others. As a non-Yoruba, if you are deemed an Omoluabi, then you can be admitted into the secrets of the race and you can partake in the gathering of the tribe, their ways of life, including marrying their women, which, like the Jewish People, the Yoruba don’t readily accept despite the race’s urbaneness, neo-liberal and progressive tendencies.
“When they say you are an Afenifere, it is an icing on the cake of your Omoluabi honour. Afenifere roughly translates to ‘the one who wants you to succeed in life as a whole,’ one who will sacrifice his or her own comfort, etc for another to thrive. So it is also a great honour for the Yoruba race to put any of their own or an outsider in the Omoluabi and Afenifere ranks.
“Mark you, that they call you an Omoluabi or an Afenifere is unlike the degrees we issue here, which you take and run away into the large society to use as you deemed fit. Knowing that one could simulate decorum over time to qualify for the honour of being called an Omoluabi or an Afenifere, the Yoruba man, woman or the outside who gets the honour of being labelled an Omoluabi or an Afenifere bears an eternal burden. The race puts and keeps an unblinking klieg light on the Omoluabi or Afenifere until the individual dies, to see that you are living up to the tenets of an Omoluabi and an Afenifere. One false step could be fatal. The honour is swiftly withdrawn and replaced with opprobrium forged in the never forgiving, never forgetting cultural lore of the Yoruba race, to be passed on to generations yet unborn in reputation-shredding songs composed specially for the next masquerade festival, proverbs and wisecracks and folklores told to their children as matter of fact on moon-lit nights. No one has ever recovered from this total trashing of their reputation from antiquity till date, even among the Yoruba themselves.”
The historian continued: “Against this historical cum cultural background, I think it is a huge faux pas for anyone to think that they could edge Tinubu out of the present government and bypass him to gain the South-West votes in future elections. The Yoruba Establishment will drop whatever differences they have with him over the 2015 Elections, close ranks and fight back both for him (Tinubu) and the race! Look, they did it for (MKO) Abiola. In 1979, Abiola backed NPN against Awo’s UPN, for which the Yoruba Establishment somewhat kept him at arm’s length. But when he won the June 12 Election and the Hausa/Fulani Oligarchy annulled that poll, the Yoruba Establishment dropped their grudge against Abiola and insisted that he must be President. When it appeared that the other parts of the country became lukewarm about the June 12 Struggle, the Yoruba People forged ahead, tapping into their formidable contacts in the western capitals of the world and the media into the battle. It is testament to the race’s doggedness over the June 12 issue that Nigeria became a pariah state in the comity of nations! And when it became obvious to those who annulled the June 12 Election that there was no way out without the Yoruba Establishment, they grudgingly bowed to the Yoruba Race’s demand, and for the first time in the history of this country, the rest of the country actually allowed two Yoruba candidates to stand election for the Presidency!
“Mark you, those who annulled the June 12 Election didn’t just leave the whole process to the Yoruba to decide. They went to pick their man, Obasanjo to run and ensured his victory. However, we must give it to the Yoruba Establishment for roundly rejecting Obasanjo in 1999 and backing the race’s preferred candidate then, Chief Olu Falae. As you may well be aware, the Yoruba Establishment has never been chum with Obasanjo because of the 1979 presidential election, which to this day the average Yoruba man would insist Awo won but that Obasanjo, allegedly doing the biddings of the Hausa/Fulani Oligarchy, manipulated in favour of Shagari. That the Yoruba Establishment has neither forget nor forgiven Obasanjo for that is perhaps evidenced by the fact that Obasanjo still struggles for unqualified acceptance among his own people, despite having ruled this country longer than anybody dead or alive!
“If today’s power brokers from the North really want to keep it for as long as constitutionally allowed, I would say it is in their self-enlightened best interest to keep Tinubu the South West on their on their side, and not do something stupid. With the way matters stand today, I can’t see the APC making appreciable inroad into the South-East or the South-South in the foreseeable future, so why would they want to alienate Tinubu or the South-West? That, to me, is suicidal, a political Hara-kiri in fact,” the academic submitted.